Visualizing Value: How We’re Telling the Story of Unrealized Potential in American Higher Education

Graphicacy’s visualization experts worked with the Institute for Higher Education Policy to transform an immense data set to help point decisionmakers to gaps in higher education outcomes

Despite efforts over the last century to open the door to higher education to a more diverse student population, persistent inequities in college attainment still exist by race and income. Even among students that finish college, earnings disparities across race and gender are discouragingly wide.

The data shows the benefits of higher education are not equally available to all, prompting researchers to ask the question: How can higher education lead to greater value for students?

“Equity in higher education started with increasing access. But getting into college isn’t enough — you also need to get through. So many students are not supported all the way across the finish line, especially students who are historically marginalized,” said Piper Hendricks, Director of Communications & External Affairs at the Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP).

“Our focus doesn’t stop with a degree,” Hendricks said. “Higher education should leave students better off, not with debt and a degree that doesn’t serve them. That’s why value is so important. To really dig in and get into that definition is innovative.”

To tell a more complete story about the value of higher education in America, researchers at IHEP partnered with the data visualization firm Graphicacy to develop the Equitable Value Explorer (EVE). While a useful tool for evaluating schools’ return on educational investment, the EVE has even greater potential to point high-level decision makers at federal, state, and institutional levels to where they can close gaps and improve postsecondary outcomes for all student populations.

Exploring and leveraging data about American higher education

The EVE contains data from a variety of publicly available sources, including the College Scorecard, regarding enrollment rates, completion rates, and income earned across different genders, races, and economic groups.

While vast, the existing data set is incomplete because federal postsecondary data is incomplete. Graphicacy’s challenge was making the most of the available data and putting it into an appropriate context.

“We built a complex framework with a lot of metrics,” explained Kim Dancy, a Research Associate at IHEP. “Robust scaffolding helps users make sense of the data and make nuanced observations.”

While not part of the project’s original scope, Graphicacy advocated to include a single snapshot that set the stage for the Explorer’s large amount of data. The snapshot came to life as a “scrollytelling” overview page that weaves the explorer’s data into a single, easy-to-follow story designed by Graphicacy and built by Graphicacy’s partner, 3 is a pattern. The intuitive platform allows everyone from everyday users to policymakers to make sense of the narrative behind the numbers.

“We wanted something special — a wow factor — and Graphicacy delivered with the overview page,” said Hendricks. “If we had just presented data, it would be great, but the big picture with the scrollytelling takes it from great to phenomenal.”

The Explorer itself features multiple components that, together, create a multidimensional picture of American higher education:

• An interactive bubble chart allows users to glean information about a range of institutions by simply hovering their cursor over a scatterplot. Users can also zoom in to view the information in more detail.
• Filters allow users to customize their findings by target population (income, gender, and race/ethnicity) and economic threshold. Additional filters group data by state, level of education, and sector.
• Individual institution pages provide an overview of each university, offering data related to performance on the value thresholds, enrollment, admission rates, completion rates, cumulative net price and, most significantly, the overall median earnings of students 10 years after initial enrollment.

Users will also notice a separate page for the University of Texas (UT) System. UT’s comprehensive data collection offered a variety of details beyond those reported in publicly available datasets. Graphicacy created a separate visualization tool specifically to make the most of this additional data — which IHEP hopes will serve as a model for what other institutions could do in the future.

Building a tool for change

The EVE’s flexible and dynamic interface unlocks a trove of data relevant for numerous groups:

• Researchers and policymakers can leverage data to ensure that America’s postsecondary education system creates value equitably across demographics
• University administrators and educators can gain insight into how their school delivers value to students equitably and how it stacks up against comparable institutions

While the EVE provides numerous avenues for how to effect change, the Explorer’s best use — and the one IHEP intended — is to assist research and drive improvement towards equity in higher education. Most importantly, the EVE serves as a powerful model for how organizations can transform publicly available data into a tool for change.

“We could see from the proposal stage how dedicated Graphicacy was to bringing this data to life and telling the larger story,” said Hendricks. “We couldn’t be happier with the results.”

Graphicacy partners with clients to tell engaging stories with data. Graphicacy’s team combines storytelling, thoughtful human-centered design, and deep technical capabilities to build and deploy strategic, data-rich digital projects. Graphicacy has created data visualizations and infographics for top-tier organizations and companies, domestically and internationally, including the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, the World Bank, the Center for American Progress, the Anti-Defamation League, and many others.